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What’s on for next week?

Resilience is about a process based an ecology of many different parts. Watch this video from Assoc. Prof. Marcus O'Donnell to find out more.
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MARCUS O’DONNELL: So we’ve come to the end of this first week in our course on building professional resilience. We’ve explored what resiliency is and started to think about some strategies for increasing resilience in our lives. The next week of the course is very applied. We look at how we can build specific skills and self-care practises that make a difference in our resilience journey. There’s a lot to cover. And we’ll introduce you to the research on how these skills and practises can make a difference. But only you can knit them together into something that works for you. So I really encourage you to try things out over the next week.
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In the first few steps, we look at insights from design thinking, which present a different approach to problem solving. And one of the insights from design thinking is that we learn by trying out multiple solutions before deciding on a final approach. So think of this week as a life experiment. And try out some of the strategies that we explore. And let us know how they work out you.

Next week, we’ll explore ways to develop more systematic or ecological approaches to resilience not only in our own lives and communities, but also in organisations and the workplace.

Before putting what you’ve learnt into practice by creating your own resilience plan, we’ll examine the idea that resilience in an individual or group arises from a systematic combination of:

  • a broad set of capabilities – such as critical thinking and problem solving
  • specific skills – such as communication and project-management skills
  • self-care practices – such as exercise, sleep and mindfulness
  • values and orientations – such as meaning-making and altruism
  • awareness and engagement – such as prioritising collaboration and collegiality.

Each of these elements are integrally related.

For example, developing mindfulness may increase your focus, which can improve your ability to better manage projects. In turn, this could facilitate better collaboration and increase a sense of both personal and collective meaning.

In other words, resilience is a process that brings together a number of component skills and practices, and the power of these skills and practices acting together is much greater than any one of them alone. It is this wholistic process that allows us to become resilient.

Your task

Use the comments to discuss with other learners how you anticipate these different elements of resilience fitting together and reinforcing each other, including some examples of the way you think this approach could work for you.

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Professional Resilience: Building Skills to Thrive at Work

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FutureLearn - Learning For Life

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